


If You Believe It Does

by PlayingChello



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bev PoV, Fix-It, M/M, Temporary Character Death, some mentions of Benverly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-15
Updated: 2019-12-15
Packaged: 2021-02-27 02:41:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21810070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlayingChello/pseuds/PlayingChello
Summary: It kills monsters… if you believe it does.A reddie love story told from the eyes of Beverly Marsh.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 16
Kudos: 137
Collections: IT Fandom Secret Santa 2019





	If You Believe It Does

**Author's Note:**

  * For [KillerSnotMonster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KillerSnotMonster/gifts).



> This is my Secret Santa gift for [Killersnotmonster](https://killersnotmonster.tumblr.com/) on tumblr!
> 
> Notes: There is one part where the order of events is a little muddy from canon, shh, I know it made more sense this way. Also, Stan is alive, his suicide was an attempt and he is recovering in an Atlanta hospital where Patty visits him every day. HE DESERVED BETTER OK.

Beverly Marsh has a poor relationship with love. In her childhood, she only really had her father to show her the ways of the world, after her mother’s death early on. And her father… was not the kindest of fathers. If not for the Losers, her idea of love as a child would have been completely destroyed. As it were, with the forgetting and the marrying Tom… maybe it was. And Tom… Tom really destroyed her. He picked up where her father left off in teaching her about ‘love.’ Their kind of love. It can hardly be called that, it had felt a lot more like hate.

But it was really all she had known, especially after having forgotten everything from Derry. Love always seemed like such a painful concept. Something almost not worth the misery. Definitely something she wasn’t, maybe still isn’t, worthy of.

But Beverly has always known what love _looks_ like.

She’s watched it, over and over again. Now that she remembers everything, she remembers being thirteen. She remembers every detail of battling It and what they all went through that summer.

And she remembers Richie and Eddie.

\--

She met Eddie in Keene’s while he, Stan, and Bill were trying to get medical supplies. She doesn’t really quite know why she decided to help them that day. There were a lot of factors, and they all lead to them. But it doesn’t matter. Bev is pretty sure she was meant to meet them.

After nicking a pack of cigarettes off of Mr. Keene, making sure the boys had gotten out of the store with their supplies, she turned the corner to find the group of boys with two others. Ben she recognised. New kid. She signed his yearbook. The last boy she had only heard of. His big glasses, curly hair, and loud fashion choices were recognisable. Richie Tozier. A kid the Bower’s gang always seemed to be after, with a loud mouth and a poor sense of humour. She had a few classes with him in the past.

Eddie was kneeled in front of Ben, trying to patch up what looked like a nasty cut on his stomach. Stan and Richie stood over him, with Richie’s incessant heckling while Eddie incessantly complains back. They all stopped when she walked up, and when she asked what happened, it was Richie that answered.

She didn’t stay long, only long enough for Bill to invite her to the quarry. But she didn’t need to stay long to see it. She saw the way Richie hovered over Eddie like it was his sole purpose in life to watch over him. She heard the way their ribbing sounded a lot more like some kind of strange love language. She didn’t know it at the time, but looking back, it’s clear that was when she first saw it.

\--

The next day, when she showed up at the quarry with the group of boys, she saw it again. Sure they all messed with each other. And sure, Richie played chicken with her and Bill and Ben while Stan and Eddie splashed at each other a little way off. But every time they’d change activities, Eddie and Richie would gravitate toward each other. Even though they usually just went to squabble with one another. It was one of those easy things. Simple truths. The sun rises in the east, Derry is a shit hole, and Eddie and Richie will always find each other.

All the Losers loved each other, it was obvious. But there was something different in the way Richie and Eddie looked at one another. Richie joked about all of them, using his terrible voices and his poor humour. But it was Eddie that he always wanted to get a reaction from. He always turned to Eddie to see if he laughed or if he got worked up from being the center of the joke. She had only spent a few hours around them and she could tell. They were made for one another.

\--

When Eddie broke his arm, it was Richie that kept him from having a full blown panic attack while Pennywise stalked toward them. Beverly remembers throwing the fence post, just trying to get the creature away from her friends while hearing Richie yell at Eddie to look at him while Eddie just yelled. Richie even went so far as to attempt to reset the bone, even though he had no fucking clue what he was doing. And, sure, none of them had a fucking clue what they were doing and they were all terrified because of the evil space clown trying to kill them.

But Richie always went for Eddie.

When they took Eddie to his mother, so he could go to the hospital, Richie helped him. And Bev could see the way Richie felt when Mrs. K banned them all from seeing Eddie. And even though she had singled out Bev, and that hurt, Bev couldn’t bring herself to feel sorry for herself when she could see the way the light had just left Richie’s eyes completely.

She understands why he didn’t want to go back.

\--

Beverly hadn’t stuck around Derry long enough to get to see much of Richie and Eddie after they defeated It. And once she left, she started to forget. And before long, the lessons she learned and the love she witnessed were absent from her mind. Missing.

She married Tom.

It was like her father all over again. Lessons in ‘love.’ More like lessons in all the ways she was wrong and he was right. It was gaslighting her into believing she was insane, that she didn’t remember things properly. It was being trained like some kind of animal with a carrot and stick method. The carrot was her cigarettes. The stick was Tom’s fists.

And that was life. That was love. Right up until that night when Mike called. Right up until memories of a town and friends started coming back.

\--

Richie and Eddie’s love language had always been a joking kind of making fun. Bev has never seen that more than when they were all eating and drinking in the Jade of the Orient restaurant. Slinging ‘fuck you’s at one another, Richie’s bit about marrying Eddie’s mother, their drunken arm wrestling and Eddie’s drunken shouting of ‘Let’s take our shirts off and kiss.’ It’s like they’re thirteen again. Except now they can drink alcohol.

But Richie and Eddie haven’t changed a bit.

Maybe even more than when they were kids, Richie gravitates toward Eddie. And Eddie gravitates toward Richie. Like they are their own little solar system, just revolving around each other, caught in a mutual gravitational pull. Planetary bodies. An unseen force pulling them together.

And maybe if she had paid a little more attention she might have noticed the way Richie is struggling. She might have seen the pain in his eyes over this dark secret he hides from everyone. But she is far too up her own problems, trying to figure out her own life, romance, fear, that she doesn’t really take the time to notice.

But she’s pretty sure Eddie does.

By the time they’re underneath Neibolt, Richie has this haunting look in his eyes. When they drop their tokens into the fire, Richie tries his best to brush past his, not really elaborating on it. But Eddie comments, even though Bev can feel the tension coming from Richie in waves from where he stands to her right.

“This is a token from the Capital Theater.”

“Hey, bro, like an actual token.”

“Yeah, man, that’s what you’re supposed to do, asshole.”

“You have any idea how long that’s going to take to burn?”

“Yeah, but so is your inhaler dude.”

Ben tries to stop them then, but Richie gets in one more comment before Mike brings them back to the task at hand. He catches Bev’s attention before putting the rock into the flames.

Things happen quickly after that.

Pennywise returns, the deadlights loom over them, and they get separated. Bev isn’t quite sure what happens to everyone else, but Ben and her end up running down a passage, trying to get away, finding themselves at a dead end before they end up separated as well.

The bathroom is an expression of all of her traumas. All of her memories of being sexualised. All of her pain. Her trauma over growing up, over becoming a woman. The blood. So much blood. She finds herself cycling through so much fear, so many thoughts of inadequacy. It’s a culmination of all the ways love has let her down, all the reasons she doesn’t really understand how anyone could love her.

And then she hears Ben.

Suddenly she feels brave. And more importantly, she feels like she is worthy of real love. Of being cared for and caring for someone else. Without the pain, without the facsimile of love that most of the men in her life had given her. Each time she kicks the door, her strength only increases. Finally, _finally_ the door gives way. Blood pours out. She’s covered in it, slippery with it, but still she reaches out, trying to save Ben from the constant pouring of dirt covering him. She doesn’t know what he’s been through, but she knows she can help him.

They reach for each other, and she pulls. Her skin is slippery with blood, but his grip is strong. She uses all of her strength to pull him toward her, to pull him out of the pit of swirling dirt and death.

And then suddenly they’re on the hard ground, back under Neibolt. Her back is cold against the ground, but she is warm, Ben on top of her, covering her.

“January embers.”

“My heart burns there, too.”

And everything makes sense. For the first time, she feels like she can experience love as it’s meant to be experienced. “It was you.”

Their moment is ruined by the sound of screaming in the distance. Ben is quick to get up and help her to her feet. And then they’re running.

By the time they make it back to the big cavern, Pennywise has Mike wrapped up in one of its tentacled limbs. They’re too far away to do anything, but a rock hits the clown’s face. Richie, brave Richie, screams at It. Pennywise loses interest in Mike, tossing him against a wall, in favour of focusing on Richie. He’s got another rock ready and he’s saying some stupid shit and then-

Dead lights.

Bev is frozen in place. She remembers the dead lights. She remembers when Pennywise had her alone and she hadn’t been afraid. And It had shown her the dead lights. They had given her a life of nightmares. Of seeing people she didn’t remember being her friends dying in horrible ways. She saw too much. She saw _this_. She saw them here.

“Beep beep motherfucker!” Eddie’s voice makes her head snap toward him. He’s throwing the fence post she gave him and it hits its target true. She’s clinging to Ben, watching the demon clown fall back onto a spike while Eddie runs to where Richie had fallen when he’d been disconnected from the dead lights.

“Rich. Ahh, Rich. Hey, Rich, wake up! Hey, yeah, there he is, buddy! Hey, Richie, listen. I think I got him, man. I think I killed It! I did! I think I killed It for real!”

Eddie is kneeled over Richie, yelling in triumph. Bev stumbles forward a few steps, wanting to get everyone back together, to be close to her friends.

The next thing she knows, a spike on the end of It’s tentacle limb is protruding obscenely through Eddie’s middle.

Bev screams.

If there is anything in this world that isn’t fair, it’s this. She doesn’t care about all of the shit she’s lived through. Doesn’t even care about the demon clown they fought as kids and have to fight again. She’d experience it all again to not have to watch Richie watch Eddie _die_.

There’s a pregnant pause while Eddie is just there, spike through his middle, looking at Richie with Richie looking up at him. And then Pennywise pulls him back, taunts them all with his victory, before flinging Eddie into a crevice at the edge of the cavern. Bill’s cries echo around Bev through her own sobbing cries. The heartache is palpable.

Suddenly everyone is moving. Everyone runs to the crevice, trying to get to Eddie. Maybe he isn’t dead. _Yet_ , a voice in the back of her mind supplies. Still she runs.

When they find him, he’s still alive, but barely. He’s bleeding and Richie tries to help him by using his jacket to staunch the flow. It won’t be enough, Bev knows. But Richie still tries. And, in true Richie fashion, he talks.

“He’s hurt really bad, we’ve got to get him out of here.”

It hurts Bev’s heart to hear the panic in his voice. “How are we supposed to do that, Rich?” She thinks her voice comes out sounding harsher than she intends. It’s an honest question. He’s hurt, and moving him too much would probably be worse than leaving him to lay still here. Especially with a rampaging monster clown at the entrance to the crevice, still alive and well, it seems.

Eddie is where they get the idea to defeat It. Eddie had nearly killed It on his own, tells them how small It had felt. How weak. So Bev suggests they get Pennywise to follow them back to the entrance of the cavern. It would have to get small in order to chase them. Richie stays behind with Eddie while Bev joins the rest of the losers to try to enact their plan.

Pennywise is too fast for them, cutting them off before they can get to the entrance. It stops them short.

“There’s more than one way to make someone small.”

Mike’s voice brings something up in Bev. _It kills monsters… if you believe it does._ “Make him believe that he is.”

Finally, they have a plan. They have something that will work. Slinging insults reminds Bev of when they were kids. But back then, they had just been proving they weren’t afraid. And that had been a temporary solution, starving It of its food source. Fear. But now, they have intent. They have a purpose. And they won’t leave until they know for sure that It is dead.

The four of them manage on their own to cut Pennywise down to size, but as they tower over what is left of It, Richie joins them. He rips off the spike limb. The one that had pierced through Eddie, the one that had taken away. Mike reaches forward toward the disgusting remnants of the Eater of Worlds and rips free It’s beating heart.

Together, the five of them crush the heart between their hands.

The end of It.

They barely have time to celebrate their victory. Bev leans into Richie, proud of their triumph. But Richie is only worries about one thing. He says Eddie’s name and they’re all running again. There’s a sinking feeling in Bev’s chest the closer they get.

She watches the way Richie goes up to him, pats him on the cheek, shares the victory. She can see the way his face falls as some part of him realises what has happened. Again, Bev fights through the pain gripping her soul enough to say Richie’s name. Bill says something, too, but she doesn’t hear it passed her own blood rushing in her ears.

“He’s alright, no, he’s just hurt. We’ve got to get him out of here. He’s just hurt. Ben? He’s hurt, we’ve got to get him out of here. Bev.”

Bev’s heart cries for him. She would give her own life to not have to say her next words. “Richie.”

He sighs heavily, looks back at her with this deep sorrow in his eyes. It makes it even harder for her to speak again. “What?”

“Honey, honey he’s dead.”

The soul crushing hurt in Richie’s eyes will never leave her memories. Not even a demon clown could rid her of the awful memory of those eyes.

He leans forward, holding Eddie. Hugging him. It rips through Bev’s heart to watch the purest love she’s ever witnessed come to this. Bill and Mike and Ben all move to try to pull Richie away. The cavern is starting to come down and they need to go. But Richie doesn’t want to leave Eddie. He’s crying and _screaming_ that they can still help him.

Suddenly, Richie’s head snaps back to look at Eddie. “Eddie?” And now Bev can’t watch this. She can’t watch him go through denial, trying to convince them that Eddie is alive. “Eddie? Guys!” He spins his head back where everyone is staring down at him incredulously, still trying to pull him away but with less heart.

“Richie,” Bill’s voice sounds broken.

“No, I heard him, he coughed. I _felt_ him. He’s still alive, guys, _please_.”

This time, they all hear the tiny groan that definitely comes from the body still in Richie’s arms. All of their heads snap to look at Eddie, who had _definitely_ been dead moments before. “Richie…” Eddie’s voice is so quiet and hoarse and broken. But it’s _there_.

And they don’t have time to question it then. The place is still coming down around them. Ben rushes to help Richie, putting a shoulder under one of Eddie’s arms while Richie takes the other. They run, trying to make their way out of the cursed underbelly of the cursed house in this cursed town. They’re barely clear of the yard when the whole thing comes down, sinks into the ground, falling into Hell.

Good riddance.

\--

Derry Home Hospital hasn’t changed since they were kids. Except that they have some more modern instruments. The monitors are on LED screens now. But it looks the same. All five of them are standing around Eddie’s bed, watching over him. Waiting. He’s alive, but asleep. Knocked out after surgery from the ridiculous amounts of pain meds he’s on now. Richie is sitting at the edge of the bed, holding his hand.

“I don’t get it. I kn-now what a dead body looks like. He was dead.” Bill only stutters over one word, already finding his voice again now that It is gone. Bev looks down at Richie, checking to see if he’d heard Bill. It doesn’t seem like it, or if he did, he doesn’t care. He can see the rise and fall of his chest now, can prove he’s alive from the beeping of the monitor.

A thought comes to Bev’s mind and she grins. She turns back to Bill while at the same time her right hand finds Ben’s and their fingers curl together.

“Love saves lives,” she looks back over to where Richie is holding Eddie’s hand with both of his, “if you believe it does.”

**Author's Note:**

> I have a [twitter](http://www.twitter.com/playingchello).


End file.
